Traditionally, importing complex assets into an authoring framework poses several challenges for iterative workflows. The artists and programmers utilizing the authoring environment may be required to use source files that are created in various other applications. In addition, workflows may be split between teams, and files may be shared via software configuration management (SCM) systems which are implemented to update underlying files that are used in a project. A problem with such authoring environments is the need to directly manage the underlying files from various sources in order to realize when changes occur from source tools.
Conventional authoring environments also specify a “unit of change” on their users at the file level. Users are asked to analyze the files they are building, to identify logical units, and to manually split these logical units across files. The files are then distributed amongst the team with the intent is that, as each file is changed, it corresponds to a logical unit. This convention scheme quickly breaks down in practice, since iterative workflows often deprecate initial assumptions about logical units.
Accordingly, what is needed is an authoring environment that detects where users have changed their files and localizes updates only to those components without imposing any workflow changes on users.